Study For "Auto-Motif #1" c. 1934

Anthony Velonis made this study for “Auto-Motif #1” with graphite on paper, and it feels like he was really thinking through making something bigger. I like the push and pull between realism and abstraction. Like, that’s a car but it’s also not really a car, you know? I can imagine Velonis walking down a street, sketching, and just letting the images come out of his hand. There is an intuitive sense to the graphite marks, and the shading gives the forms weight but also ambiguity. It feels like he’s searching for something. The city motifs—buildings, lampposts, pedestrians—they’re all there but broken up, abstracted. It kind of reminds me of Stuart Davis’s urban scenes, where everything is flattened and jazzy. Velonis was part of the silkscreen movement, so you can see how this drawing might be a way to explore the graphic possibilities of the medium he was working in. I mean, we all look at each other's stuff and riff off each other, right? It’s one big conversation across time.